My Experiences with Infinity Publishing and SBRPG

[darkgar]

Well, my RPG, SBRPG, is finally out, after 5 long years of writing, testing, and proofing.  I orginally wanted to go with a more upsacale PoD printer, such as Xlibris.  Xlibris told me they could do a roleplaying game, but they couldn't accept PDFs, had trouble printing a book size I wanted, and the charge per in-book chart discouraged me from using them.  Xlibris does all the layout themselves, you just submit the text, charts, and art, and they do they rest.  That's not really what I wanted, so I kept looking.

So I tried Infinity Publishing.  For my $500 setup fee, I got my a nice 530 page trade paperback book, full color glossy cover, ISBN, barcode, and (I hope soon for my intl. buyers) listing on Amazon and Barnes&Noble.  The best part is, I don't have to keep any inventory at my house & ship myself, they sell my game through their online bookstore.

Infinity accepts PDFs, which was a great in my case, because I have charts galore and full page artwork in SBRPG.  They also print 8.5x11" books (and some other novel sizes), up to 530 pages in length.  The interiors are black & white (not a problem for me), and the print quality is good.  As long as you leave enough margin space on your PDF (give them a call), you're fine.

The only problem their printing process has is with images or maps with a lot of black in them, images like these can leave blank toner streaks on the very next page.  We had three images in SBRPG that needed to have their black saturation toned down a bit (sic) on the second print-proof.  Once we did that, the streaks were gone, and the book was good to go.  Once we made those changes, you can't tell the difference between the paper quality and print between their PoD process, and a premium book printer (it's very nice indeed).

I must admit, the people at Infinity were nice, and I was always able to get answers withing minutes of giving them a call.  They will even give you the email/phone number of their pagesetter & layout guy if you need to ask questions about that sort of stuff.  All in all, I'm happy I went with them.  I also noticed a new d20 setting being published on their site, so that gives them two roleplaying games on their bookstore's games section.

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Well, I'm happy that our game is out finally, and you can read our FAQs at www.SBRPG.com.  SBRPG is a setting-independent game, written for people who like to create their own roleplaying game worlds; and covers every genre from fantasy, to modern, to sci-fi.  We have world, character, race, class, and power creation tools - which is cool because you create your own worlds.  But anyways, I hope by sharing my publishing experiences it will help someone find a new avenue for publishing their games.  It's both stressful and a lot of fun (at the same time), but you won't regret it when you're done.

If you have any questions about SBRPG or my experiences publishing it, feel free to drop me a line.

Darkgar

[Josh Roby]

Can you give us a few more details?

You mentioned a $500 setup fee.  Since this is a PoD thing, I'm assuming there was never any per-book printing charge.

Does Infinity hold any sort of exclusive distributorship rights (all copies of your book must come from Infinity for the next x years) or do they hold that in sort of a de-facto way since nobody else is manufacturing your title?

You mentioned amazon and b&n -- is that a given thing that is part of setup, or does it depend on amazon/borders and b&n's buyers liking your book?

Does Infinity regularly sell to game stores, or some other target market that you are specifically interested in?

You sent them pdfs, they sell your book -- just to make sure, were there no proofing or galley charges for you reviewing the finished product? -- how much do you make off of each sale, and how do those checks get to you?

[darkgar]

No, there is no per-book printing charge.  When a customer orders a book, you get a royalty.

You hold the exclusive rights to your book.  You can stop printing, switch publishers, or do anything else you want with your book.

When a book is published with Infinity, it's immidiately put up on their site.  Infinity submits your book to Amazon and B&N, which takes 2-3 months to go through Amazon's and B&N's systems.  I don't think there's any "buyer" involvement, since the order goes through Amazon and B&N and goes straight to Infinity - who prints the books on demand (in this case, you get less royalties, since Amazon and B&N have to take their cut).  If you do a publisher search on Amazon for Infinity, you will see their entire book selection listed there.

As far as I know, SBRPG is the first full roleplaying game Infinity has published.  As of a couple months ago, Infinity has instituted a bookstore sale policy (bookstore sales require a certain discount, plus the ability for the bookstore to return books).  So yes, Infinity can sell to bookstores and hobby shops just like a normal bookdealer can.

This is how it goes: you send them the setup fee and the PDF.  After 6-8 weeks, they send you a proof book to review.  You make your corrections and send a new PDF back.  You get one free revision, subsequent revisions (sending in a new PDF after the first correction) cost $100.  They will provide a book to you to send to the US Copyright office - this has a fee of $30 paid to the US Goverment.  Then, you sign the release form and send it in.  Once they get that form, you are put up for sale on the Infinity site.  Other than the charges I mentioned, there are no other fees and charges.  (There is an optional marketing plan, or an optional listing fee for Ingram, if you want).

The complete process is described here.

As for royalties, check out Infinity's downloadable PDF file for their pricing structure.  You can charge a price above their suggested price, in which case, you make a larger profit per book sold.  You get a royalty check every month.

All in all, it was a good deal for SBRPG, and freed me up to worry about quality, proofing, and getting the project done.  It's nice to have an online store handling production, sales, royalties, and shipping for me.

For more information, check Infinity's site.

I hope this helps,

Darkgar

[TonyLB]

Um... okay.  I genuinely do not get this business model.

First, they charge you $500 to set up, which obviously compares unfavorably to the numerous places that charge a $0 setup fee.  Yes, they give you an ISBN number, but that appears to be about it.  With an ISBN I can get the barcode, Amazon listing and so forth on my own.  And, last I checked, ISBNs were not running to $500.

Then they charge you 80% of the MSRP of your book for each book sold at their standard prices.  So if you're printing a 90 page book for their recommendation of (roughly) $10, they're charging you $8 per copy.

I would laugh at a printer who said that they were going to charge $800 for a 100-book print run of 90 page soft-cover with black and white interior.  I pay half that for a book twice as big, and I expect to be (and am!) treated like a freakin' prince for paying such luxury prices.  So what am I missing?  How do these numbers make sense?  Why not just go with Lulu?

[Josh Roby]

And, last I checked, ISBNs were not running to $500.

10 ISBN Publisher Registration for $25.95, then $225 for ten ISBNs from Bowker.  (Get barcodes too for $25 each.)  So 10 ISBNs for $250.  This is actually something that publishers at the Forge might want to jump in together on, if having an ISBN is important to you.

No doubt Infinity buys ISBNs in bulk -- we buy them by the thousands.